About Me

Monday, March 31, 2014

Google In The Neighbourhood

Here's something I wanted to blog about since last month but haven't gotten down to doing so.. Till now. So as such, I hereby beseech thee that thou can go exile thyself out of my presence, Procrastination.

There is this newly-constructed building at the tail end of a highway just behind and across the street from where I'm staying. Said building is situated at the fringe of one of the remotest and smallest estates in the country's western corner. My buddy Lim happens to be staying in this little estate, so us both cowboys in the remote west have been really curious as to what the new building would be used for ever since they started its construction.

Now we know. More accurately speaking, we found out on the night of the 11th of February last month that the new building (which is now operational) is one of Big G's data centre. Pardon the moniker which I like to use on Google; by 'Big G', I was referring to Google there.

Rumours were already flying around in the neighbourhood for months that the new building was supposedly Google's but since there have been no signages placed on the exterior of the building, we couldn't be sure, though Lim told me he spotted a group of folks dressed in Google t-shirts having lunch at the nearby coffeeshop on one occasion.

On the night of the 11th last month, Lim and me took a stroll and as were walking along the street opposite the front of the building, sure enough, we spotted a big 'Google' signage inside the main lobby on the ground floor. We could see it even from the distance where we were opposite across the street.

Boy, Big G has always been kinda low profile about themselves, haven't they? No signage outside the building? That's like Natalie Portman trying not to draw attention to herself while walking about in public. Actually, that just happens to be one of the characteristics I like about Google - just shut up and let the products and services do the talking.

That's not very prudent from a politically-correct marketing point of view but hey, show offs can be a turn-off from my non-prudent point of view and I happen to hate politics in every form it comes in.

What am I getting at?

Compare Google and Apple (or Android and iOS if you will, since mobile tech is arguably a much hotter topic than Natalie Portman these days). See? One of them is like the industry's whore flaunting its attention deficit disorder (diminishing market attention, accurately speaking) by trampling on the toes of others in an attempt to make themselves to still look relevant in this day and age. Sailors in a slowly sinking ship claw at what's around them in desperation, leaving unsightly lawyers-endorsed scratch marks all over.

Rectangles with rounded corners, which is an industry standard, still holds onto the same cake as the most ridiculous patent attempt I've ever heard. Heh. If you didn't catch on the iMotive, it's called M.O.N.O.P.O.L.Y. If you have been surpassed, you slow your competitors down by getting them caught up in the quagmire of litigations as you try snatching the reins from them, see?

Aye, business is business and businesses employ tactics against their competitors but when a business entity attempts to obliterate everybody else by gaining ownership of industry-wide standards, it's just cheap - especially when they didn't even invent the rectangle shape with rounded corners. Makes me picture the very first baker centuries ago who baked a loaf of bread twitching in his or her grave and I certainly don't think he or she even invented the shape.

I call it D.E.S.P.E.R.A.T.I.O.N. and desperation is a sign that you have already started slipping downwards - probably not in terms of sales revenue (yet) but in market share and keeping pace with competitive technological advancements. So as such, the fruitloop has already gone passé to me since personally, I don't see why I should feed the industry's biggest troll who has gone behind the curve with my hard-earned dough.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against iProducts (they still function nicely for what they've been designed to do - if you ignore their OS's limitations in comparison to what competing OSes can achieve, that is) and I have nothing against iUsers, I just won't support Apple as a company anymore.

I suppose if you are not a big fan of mobile tech, all these shouldn't even bother you one bit but if you love tech as a whole, I don't know how you can say you do on one hand while on the other, consciously supporting the industry's biggest troll who is impeding the industry's progress with dubious ownership and invention claims.

Just saying, since I happen to love mobile tech and so, I aim my flamethrower at that which impedes it. We all tend to be protective over that which we love, yeah? By the way, I heart Natalie Portman regardless of what's trending now.

Anyway, when Lim and me spotted the Google signage in the building's lobby from where we were across the street, the both of us just stood rooted to the spot as we gazed at the building while imagining ourselves working in there with our names on Google's payroll. I've read about how Google has one of the best and fun working environment, you see. I once saw a group of people rollerblading and enjoying themselves within the building's compound one night.

For Lim, he likes and admires Google, which explains his part of his starry-eyed trance as we both stood there just staring at the building. Lim is still in search of a job with a company he can enjoy working for, which adds to the stars he was seeing in his eyes right there and then.

Speaking of work, I'm now doing sales and merchandising in the FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) industry and I service the major supermarts and hypermarts in the western sector of the country. From a formal work wear Sales & Marketing Executive in the Pharmaceutical industry to a FMCG Sales Merchandiser who goes about in take-it-easy smart casual clothes.. I'll talk more about my current work next time but for now, let's get back to that new Google building.

As Lim and me stood there staring at Google's new building, we cracked silly jokes like how working in there ought to give us the benefit of getting our Android software updates faster and such. Underneath the silly jokes though, we really wondered how nice it would be to be working in that data centre - we could sleep longer and get home faster since the building is within such a short walking distance from where we are staying, which also means zero transportation costs and avoiding the peak travel hours tired corporate zombies in the public transports.

I took the opportunity to tell Lim about how I could piss a cabby off in the event that I happened to be working in that building, oversleep and finding myself running late for work, book a cab and then tell the cabby to just drive across the street behind my block to the data centre and finish the journey in a few seconds. I've mentioned our jokes were silly but I haven't mentioned yet that they were stupid too.

But for me, working in that Google building has to remain a fun imagination for now, since I happen to like and enjoy my current job. So this blog post also serves to let it be known that I'm currently doing fine in my work life, since I realised I haven't talked about what happened to my work life after I left the Pharmaceutical industry a year ago.

If you are looking for a job you can be happy for the most part with ('for the most part' because there's no such thing as a 100% happy-all-the-time job), dear gentle reader, don't give up and don't settle for something you find yourself completely miserable working for. Keep your chin up and keep looking. You can't find if you give up seeking.

If you happen to be working in that mentioned Google data centre in this blog post, I think you have the starry-eyed admiration of the residents staying in the vicinity - you sure as heck have mine. Keep rocking.